What I do – and why

Here’s the text of the talk I gave at the Sindh Medical College Alumni Association of North America dinner at the annual APPNA conference in San Francisco on Friday, July 3:

I’d like to tell you about what I do – and why.

When people ask me about my religion, I often say – only half in jest – that my religion is journalism. And I describe myself as a lapsed or recovering journalist. We all have ideas about what journalism should be and do, and all too often it doesn’t live up to those ideas. Journalism for me has been a useful vehicle for exploring the world, but it’s not adequate to understanding it properly.

More specifically, the Pakistan I hear about in the news is not the Pakistan I know from my own experience. That’s why, after a decade of traveling and living in Pakistan, I wrote a book not of hard or political journalism, but of human stories. I did the opposite of what most Western writing on Pakistan does: I put Pakistani people in the foreground, and politics in the background.

I first visited Pakistan in 1995, after spending many weeks on the ground in Indian-held Kashmir, because I wanted to understand the Pakistani point of view on the situation there. I got a stiff dose of politics on two long visits to Pakistan in 1999. Then, in 2003, I was able to deepen my experience of Pakistan by accepting an invitation to spend a semester teaching at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore.

The result of that experience was my book Alive and Well in Pakistan, published in 2004. Since then, as Pakistan has become more and more prominent in the American media, I’ve done more and more speaking to American audiences about the Pakistan I know. Like anyone, I need to make a living, and I want to do it in a way that’s honorable and useful, and one way I can be useful is by sharing my mostly positive experience of Pakistan with other Americans. I’m doing this in churches and living rooms and public meetings around America, and in my blog, which is online at www.aliveandwellinpakistan.com. I’m also writing a second book, covering events in Pakistan since 2004 and narrating a trip I made there earlier this year, and showing slides of my friend Pete Sabo’s wonderful photographs from our trip.

One question people ask me often about my work is why I do it. This is a very telling question, and it deserves a thoughtful answer. When I don’t have the time or patience to answer it properly, sometimes I joke that I’m actually with the CIA. I’m not, but the suspicion that I might be reveals the lack of trust between Pakistanis and Americans that we must overcome.

My real answer is that I write and speak to Americans about Pakistan because it’s necessary work that I’m in a position to do. The other aspect of the “Why?” question, though, is, “Why bother?” A Pakistani lady I met earlier this week asked me, “But does it do any good?” and, “What about the media?” The defeatism inherent in these questions is understandable, but very regrettable.

The answer to the first question is that we can’t know how much good it might do; we have to do the work faithfully, and let it do whatever good it’s going to do. The answer to the second question is that, these days, we can be the media. In his earlier remarks Dr. Suhail Sidiqui mentioned Mahatma Gandhi, and I’m reminded of something Gandhi said: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Instead of complaining about the media, I’m meeting the American public in its own living rooms and churches. And the Internet and changes in printing technology, and the general democratization of communications, allow us to speak to and influence each other in ways we couldn’t have done even a few years ago.

To me, the challenge we face is represented by the woman at a church in Seattle who asked me what a drone attack is. She and many others like her need more and better information, and they also need to be reminded that the people who suffer first and most whenever there’s violence in Pakistan are Pakistanis.

One of the kindest things said about my first book was when the reviewer in The Daily Telegraph called it “a search for common humanity.” I’m continuing that search in my new book, which I’ll be using to help promote what I believe is a crucially important conversation with mainstream America. I have a compulsion to bring it out quickly – by early next year – and to keep control of the project, so that it finds the public and meets the need it’s intended for.

There are a few things you can do to help me help Americans understand the real Pakistan:

• You can give my books to your American friends and colleagues.
• You can use your influence as community and professional leaders to create and find audiences for me to speak to.
• You can visit and promote my blog, online at www.aliveandwellinpakistan.com, and encourage people to be in touch with me.

Thank you very much for inviting me to be with you tonight, and Pakistan zindabad!

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